The squads mission had now just begun once they had arrived just on the edge of the perimeter of the Chinese Ice Camp. Diane had taken point ahead of the squad and was staring directly into the entrance of the camp as she lay in the snow looking through her sniper's scope. Ruby crawled up alongside her as she whispered, "Okay Strassman how many are we talking are guarding the front entrance?" Diane continued to stare intently through her scope trying to spot out more soldiers as she responded. "Standard guard strength sir along with one attack dog, I don't think they are expecting to get attacked, they also have an alarm system set up." Ruby took out her sniper rifle and looked through the scope to confirm Diane's findings, her heart sank when she saw the attack dog and resisted the urge to cry as she noticed how the dog looked exactly like her canine partner back in the Capital Wasteland Dogmeat. "Okay here's the plan go for the dog first I'll head back and round up the others, once we hear your shot we'll storm the camp and with any luck they'll be dead before they even turn to see us." Diane nodded as she readied her first shot and Ruby moved back towards the others and told them the plan. "Rain hell on them with bullets and hope they don't shoot back? I can work with that." Jonathan said nodding to himself.

They all had just finished getting into position when they heard Diane fire. "Alright lets go! Lets go fatasses get left behind!" She yelled as she started sprinting towards the camp. The others got up to follow her as she heard Jonathan and Henry begin to fire upon the soldiers in the camp as she saw the first two guards get cut down before they could make it to the alarm switch. "Vasquez grenade toss on my mark!" She yelled as they each pulled out a grenade pulling the pin as they clenched it in their hand cooking it. "1,2,3! Throw!" Ruby yelled as they both tossed their grenades into the camp ducking down from the resulting explosions as she saw a digitizing arm and leg fly off to the side. The assault immediately began to start dying down as they checked each of the tents gunning down any Chinese soldiers they found. Ruby was packing away some enemy intel she found while searching one of the tents when David came running up to her. "Sir we found some POW's they were banged up pretty bad so Doc Jones is taking a look at em." Ruby smiled with relief that they were able to save some lives even if they were just simulated personas. "Excellent Corporal take me to them maybe we can see if they can give us any intel on the road ahead to the depot." David nodded as he lead her to where him and Jonathan found them.

They seemed to perk up as soon as they saw her as Henry was tending to their wounds. Ruby took note of the wounds and the torn rope behind them concluding that they had been bound at the wrists and tortured for interrogation. She kneeled down in front of the men as she asked the first important question that came to mind. "Did you guys talk?" The two men seemed to grin with confidence despite the cuts on their faces, "Hell no sir! The Reds only got our names, ranks and serial numbers out of us!" Ruby smiled with approval as she continued speaking with the men. An hour had passed as she returned to the others having sent the team's corpsman to escort the two wounded POW's back to headquarters. Ruby sighed with frustration as she thought of the imminent danger they were about to face en route to their objective. "Anybody got any pulse grenades?" Each of them shook their heads as Diane stepped up. "What for sir? What's up ahead?"

Ruby sighed again hating herself for having to break the horrible news to them as she said. "The prisoners mentioned something about hearing one of the guards talk about spider mines having been deployed up ahead." Each of her squad mates swore at the mention of spider mines, Ruby herself was the most frustrated as she remembered seeing the schematics for one on a contraband list of what not to bring into the a vault when she was younger. First trigger happy Chinese soldiers, suicidal special ops, and now its tiny little flat exploding robots that crawl to you. As if my day couldn't get any fucking better! She thought as they began their trek through the small valley of death.

It was barely getting towards the evening or in the case of being in Alaska, pitch darkness as the five soldiers finally arrived at the entrance to their objective. "God I hate spider mines…" Ruby heard Benji mutter as she scanned the entrance with night vision goggles as she took note of the guards in the towers as one operated a searchlight. "Damnit…" She whispered as she signaled for Diane to move up next to her. "What's the plan commander?" She whispered as she scanned the entrance as well silently swearing at the tightness of security. "This might be tough…" Ruby mumbled.

Their assault began that early morning as Ruby and Diane sniped the two tower guards as the rest of the squad stormed in gunning down incoming Chinese soldiers. When Ruby and Diane finally rejoined the squad inside the base she saw that the enemy troop presence was large than she initially thought. Shit with the enemy at a company and a half strength how the hell is one squad supposed to secure this place? She thought angrily as she stopped next to Jonathan. "This place is chocked to the fucking brim of Reds!" He yelled as he leaned out to shoot an incoming trio of Chinese Soldiers trying to flank their position. Ruby looked over and saw Diane and David taking cover at the side of a building leaning out to fire when they could. Ruby looked at the large building and suddenly an idea popped into her head. "Kowalski on me!" She yelled and began running towards Diane and David as he trailed behind her giving her covering fire as he ran. Ruby could almost feel the bullets whiz past her ears as she got up next to them under an overlooking window of the building. "What's the plan commander?!" Diane yelled as she blind fired a three shot burst with her rifle.

"We need to get into some better cover than this! Vasquez pop a missile at em! Kowalski keep their heads down! Strassman your with me! We'll flank them from inside!" They all simultaneously began carrying out their orders as David took out his missile launcher and fired at the Chinese soldiers blasting an entire squad in the process while Jonathan fired over him suppressing the other troops as Ruby and Diane jumped grabbing onto the edge of the window and climbing into the cold steel building immediately getting into position as they rained sniper support down on the enemy both quickly reloading in unison as the last of the hostile troops began running. "They're falling back! Holy shit we got em on the run!" She heard Jonathan yell as she saw him run out of cover and began chasing after the retreating soldiers. Ruby was about to yell for him to get his ass back into cover when she heard a loud rumbling. She had noticed the deactivated Chimera tanks that were under maintenance when they had come in and had felt uneasy that it seemed all of them were inactive.

At that point she realized her caution had been warranted as a large red beam slammed in front of where Jonathan was running as she heard him scream in terror and agony as the resulting explosion sent him flying backwards. "Sonuva bitch!" Ruby snarled as Benji yelled out "Chimera tank incoming!" in that split second one of the most suicidal and stupid ideas she ever thought of popped into her head. "Strassman! Montgomery! Keep that tank busy! Vasquez! Get ready to fire with everything you got!" Just as Benji was about to ask Ruby dashed out of the building dodging the Chimera tank's laser fire as she sprinted towards it. "Just try and fry me you Metal Gear reject!" Ruby yelled as she jumped almost being propelled by one of the explosions from the tank's beam behind her and slammed directly onto the tank. She landed onto the tank's body with a thud as she felt bolts of pain shooting throughout her body from the hard landing.

"Sonuva bitch remind me never to bull-rush a fucking tank ever again…!" She mumbled as she climbed onto the top of the tank as it almost went into a spin struggling to shake her off. "Oh fuck worst carnival ride ever!" was all she could say as suddenly she was blown back by another explosion flying off the tank and landing on her back directly into a heavy snow bank quickly losing consciousness from the resulting shock.

It had been two hours since their assault began when Ruby finally regained consciousness seeing Diane and Jonathan crouched over her with worry painted on their faces. She grinned as she noticed that Jonathan survived his ordeal noticing the long scar across his face from the shrapnel wounds he took as most of the armor he had been wearing melted away from the heat of the beam leaving a large black mark on his chest. "Kowalski you look like shit…" She gasped out grinning as she caught her breath. He grinned back at her as Diane helped her sit up. "Yeah the armor took most of the impact but I'll be fine nothing Doc Adami or Jones cant fix." He said as he kept a lookout for anymore remnant Chinese forces. "You're a crazy a bitch you know that commander?" Diane said as she jammed some Med-X into her legs to kill the agonizing pain Ruby was feeling. "Yeah I know it's a blessing and a curse." Ruby was able to whisper giggling as it came out as more of a dry cackle. "Where's Vasquez and Montgomery?" She asked as she looked around for her other two squad mates.

"They went to the other side of the base to mop up any remaining resistance and place the other charge on the fuel tank in that area." Diane said as she helped Ruby onto her feet as she wiggled her fingers and toes trying to get feeling back into her muscles. "Good Good we should do our end of the bargain as well." Ruby said as she took out one of the explosive charges she was given as she saw David and Benji come running around the corner. "We have to get the fuck outta here! We spotted more Chimera tanks headed this way from one of the exit roads!" Shit I got to place this down fast! Ruby thought as she hobbled her way over to the fuel tank jamming two stimpaks into her legs as she began to place down the charge and set the timer. She could hear the Chinese reinforcements getting close as the ground began to shake from the rumbling of the drill treads of multiple Chimera tanks. She quickly armed the charge as she heard Chinese troops barking out orders to each other. "Okay Charge is set! Fall back! Lets get the hell out of Dodge!"

The squad was almost clear of the spider mine valley when they heard the double explosions from the charges they placed at the Chimera depot. "Woohoo! We nailed it commander!" David yelled with joy as the squad returned to base that afternoon. After her debriefing she winced sitting on one of the cots in the hospital tent clad without her armor but instead the dark blue undershirt underneath and underwear as Doctor Adami tended to her wounds. "Hey I heard about what you did at the tank depot from Kowalski. Do you have some sort of fucking death wish?" She asked Ruby as she bandaged up some shrapnel wounds on her arms. "I mean most of our guys wouldn't dare charge a Chimera tank head on." Ruby grinned up at her as she finished her work. "One thing you gotta remember Doc Adami is that I'm not stupid just really fucking insane and unstable."

She walked out 30 minutes later to find her squad gearing up for the next assault on the intelligence outpost each of them sharing a grin at her seeing her walk out. "And there's our resident badass psychopath right now!" Benji said as he laughed before taking a drink of some Nuka Cola while Henry slapped Jonathan in the back of the head. "Not like our heroic dumbass here." He said with a grin as Jonathan laughed while cleaning his rifle clad in a new set of combat armor. "yeah yeah laugh it up Doc considering you got to get all cozy back here at base you were probably fucking Doc Adami's brains out while we were gone!" Henry continued to laugh as he retorted. "Only when your around Kowalski, Only when your around." Ruby had contemplated reprimanding Jonathan for that idiotic mistake he made back at the depot but couldn't as she smiled at her squad mates as they playfully bickered and joked with each other while cleaning and maintaining their gear. These guys were all kids like me once…kids with excited dreams of adventure only to have the war harden them into the men and women they are now. War…War really never changes.

It was barely 7:00 am when they finally arrived at the rendezvous point with some other American soldiers at the entrance of the Mining town. The leader of the large ragtag group of soldiers saw her coming and saluted. "Lieutenant Ronald Garrett commanding officer of Zeta company nice to see you made it sir." He said as Ruby heard a couple of other soldiers muttering to each other as he noticed one peeking out into the town. "At ease Lieutenant are you and your men ready to begin?" She asked. Just as he nodded in acknowledgement Ruby saw the soldier that had been leaning out go down as a bullet went threw his head. "Sniper!" she heard Benji yell out as the rest of the soldiers scrambled to begin the assault. Unfortunately that was when all hell began to break loose.